Live Sourdough Starter

Live Sourdough Starter

It's great fun to culture your own sourdough starter. But it'll be a quarter of a century until your home made starter is as good as this one.

Back in 1990, Master Baker Warwick Quinton decided to get serious about his baking obsession, and made this starter using whole grains and pure water in his tiny kitchen in Waverley, NSW.

It took many forms in the years between then and now. It began as a fermentation of cooked grains, sitting in a window sill in the East Coast Sydney sun. It gradually morphed into a 200 litre tub of liquid organic wholewheat starter, being used and fed every day to create many thousands of loaves from Warwick's large bakery in the Blue Mountains.

About seven years ago, it morphed again into a desem, or dough starter, which resided in a domestic fridge in Warwick's Newcastle residence - about the time he began his website, sourdoughbaker.com.au. Warwick has been using this style of starter ever since.

A dough starter has a number of advantages over a liquid. It has a different mix of enzymes, and as such gives the bread a superior flavour and texture. It is also more stable, needing to be fed only occasionally. Typically, the starter is fed once every two weeks, though it will live quite happily for a month or more between feeds.

Our Live Sourdough Starter is over 27 years old. It was originally cultured from scratch by the SourdoughBaker himself, Warwick Quinton. During that time, this starter has leavened millions of loaves of bread. It has been the sourdough backbone to all of Warwick's bakeries, as well as the backbone of many other bakeries (home and professional) that Warwick has collaborated with over the years.

The starter is in the DESEM style, meaning that it is thick, like a dough. For transport reasons, the Desem has been rolled into a sheet and may require a feed before use. Full instructions are with the package.

In addition, the starter comes with Warwick's booklet, 'Sourdough Fermentation Mini Guide', a very useful printed book to help to demystify the sourdough process. This book is valued at $10 and is included free of charge.

Please note: Freight is included in the price to anywhere in Australia. We can't post overseas due to varying customs laws. Please don't order this product if you live outside Australia.